Some early reviews of OpenSUSE 11.1 are beginning to trickle in and several of them highlight the problems in more obvious ways than reviews which we mentioned on Saturday.

Here is one person's horrific start with OpenSUSE 11.1:

In the past 24-hours with the latest openSUSE 11.1, I’ve had a horrific experience. And while I’ve not given up on the distribution, I’m putting down my experiences here neither as a call for help nor as a rant to keep people away. Rather, an honest approach spreads honest knowledge… and hopefully I will be proved wrong, and others will not make the same “mistakes?” I made. What follows is a quick historical recount of my experiences with openSUSE and also my current trauma.

This one was posted in USENET:

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    Message-ID: <%Fc3l.12739$i_6.11499@newsfe11.ams2>     From: The Lost Packet <jmthelostpacket@googlemail.com>     Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy     Subject: OpenSuSE 11.1 PPC Part II     Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:34:49 +0000     User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 (Windows/20081105)     Organization: virginmedia.com

Not much to tell, I haven't tested it (the memory) and have no intention to do so 'cos it works thus far and that's all that matters to me.

Really all I did was to add the 11.1DVD to a virgin 10.3 install as an update repository. After adding kernel, KDE and proprietery ATI drivers as the update package and resolving the few dozen dependencies that cropped up (which mainly consisted of "<i>gnore this conflict and carry on"), YaST updated the install to 11.1 and after that, allowed me to autoupdate everything else via YUM. Have fun! Warning, when you get a stack of XML files downloading it'll take an hour or so on a fast link; you know the kernel update's worked and it's updated the version key as well, it'll be downloading the latest patches for 11.1 rather than for 10.3 which seems to be AWOL. Though, for some reason it requires the 10.3 disc to clear the update cache the first time round... hohum.

(cc of a reply to a private message)

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There are a few more positive experiences that we will mention later, but either way, comprehensive reviews typically conclude that SUSE is matched or surpassed by its competition that has no ties to Microsoft. ⬆